11.26.2007

And they say desegregation was a big step forward,but integration only covered up a rotten core.The surfaced might have changed,but the cauldron is still hot.Now we're more politically correct,with less real talk.-"North by Northwest" by Blue Scholars

As Carlo blogged previously in where he posted an essay on Thanksgiving by Robert Jensen we need to stop and think for a moment what is we are celebrating. For me Thanksgiving is the one day in the year were we can sit back and see white privilege and white supremacy being played out all over the nation.

We all know the myth about pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down and sharing a meal and having a good ol' time over turkey, pumpkin pie, and what not and we always look back and those who "came before" and are thankful that this nation was "founded" upon such noble principles as sharing and kinship and uh...well...merciless genocide of the, you know, Americans, as in the Native Americans, you know, the people who were kinda here thousands of years before the white man ever set foot on Plymouth Rock.

The reason why I say that Thanksgiving is a window into white privilege is because for those who don't view this country as racist and exploitative and who view this country as free and fair how come once a year we decide to celebrate the genocide of Native Americans? Because that's really what Thanksgiving is about. Being "thankful" for this "nation." A nation that only exists because white folks went on the "war path" and drove out millions of Americans from their home (and from this world) and went to war with Mexico to further expand this country and in then turned those guns on the Native Americans in the former Mexican territories. Even conservative historians admit as much, how could one not?

Yet we celebrate this. Not because we are happy over the deaths of millions but because of the way our history is given to us. As Robert Jensen wrote:

When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who 'settled' the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, 'Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?'

...

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact. Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony.

Essentially the celebration of Thanksgiving is the culmination of hundreds of years of white supremacy and white privilege condensed into one day. Whites have no idea how demeaning it is to Native Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving because they have grown up in a country that promotes whiteness as the norm and white supremacy as the mainstream. It's only through the concerted effort of white supremacist and uncritical historians, politicians, teachers, and others that Thanksgiving is still considered a holiday.

If we did indeed live in a society that was free and fair than we would have discussions on the media about what Thanksgiving really is about and we would read history books in the classrooms about the early massacres of Native Americans by the early white settlers (Spanish, English, and French), there would be debates over the radio that included Native American historians, leader,s and activists about their history and Black, Brown, and white historians discussing white privelege in this country and institutionalized racism and its very real realities today for all people of color, especially Native Americans.

And instead of celebrating the genocide of Native Americans we could probably turn the tables and start to "X these white boys out/like Kevin Federline."

I'll be tunning in today to see if any of this happens.

Just some food for thought as we feast with our families and friends over whatever it is we want to "celebrate."

It's Thanksgiving today and while many of us are probably gonna be celebrating and stuffing our faces with grub, we should also take time to think about what we're exactly celebrating. In a nation that's supposedly the pinnacle of democracy and freedom - where things such as racism are a thing of the past, we should think about what kind of myths are woven into and perpetuated in our national story. Robert Jensen wrote this piece "No Thanks to Thanksgiving," which I thought was pretty dang awesome. Enjoy.

No Thanks to ThanksgivingBy: Robert Jensen

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world's great powers achieved 'greatness' through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving 'wild beasts' from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, 'both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape.' Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the 'merciless Indian Savages' -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, '[W]e shall destroy all of them.'

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process 'due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.' Roosevelt also once said, 'I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.'

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how 'respectable' politicians, pundits, and professors play the game:

When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who 'settled' the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, 'Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?'

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to 'humble our proud nation' and 'undermine young people's faith in our country.'

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact. Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony.

History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day's mythology on our minds.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

11.21.2007

Via Apurva who uploaded a debate between Chomsky and Foucault. Foucault says something on the university and educational system that I believe is a reality in todays America, as well as a few other systems. He says, starting out with explaining government institutions:

These institutions transmit orders, apply them and punish people who don't obey. But I think that the political power is also exerted by a few other institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power, which seem to be independent but which actually aren't. We all know that the university and the whole educational system that is supposed to distribute knowledge, we know that the educational system maintains the power in the hands of a certain social class and exclude the the other social class from this power...Psychiatry is also a way to implement a political power to a political social group. Justice also.

His point on psychiatry also reminds me why the Association of Black Psychologists started back in 1968. Even though psychiatrists and psychologists liked to pride themselves in being "objective" they were actually very subjective and psychiatry and psychology were just another tool used by this American system of white supremacy to subjugate people of color to the will of the white male. Black psychologists needed a space to develop their own theories and to help their own people and take on that system of white supremacy without the tentacles of Euro-centric education trying to strangle them.

11.20.2007

When you can't win an election on your own merits, wouldn't it be great to pick own your electorate who you can trust will vote for you? That's why politicians like to draw district boundaries to ensure one-party dominance. A new study [pdf] from the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality shows pretty conclusively that by demanding voters show photo IDs, Republicans ensure that more voters are white, older, and affluent. Others, likely Democrats, get pushed off the rolls.

Indiana's photo ID law is being challenged as discriminatory in court. Researchers set out to find what it really would do voter eligibility. They polled carefully randomized samples of voters and non-voters about their IDs. The results show clearly that the ID requirement is designed to build a Republican bias into the universe of voters and potential voters.

11.11.2007

So, I host sunday night jam sessions every week and have been asked to invite you over to listen. I try to play music that is lyric based, and always has a socially conscious lean to it. There is no particular genre that I stick to, but it's always entertaining and always random. come through sunday night jam sessions

Here's this weeks show (all are also available through itunes podcast)

11.03.2007

It's been a while since I've done this as I normally am not at my computer on Saturdays. If you need an update on what Saturday Beats is and who writes these wonderful pieces click here.

I Refuse!Life is full of mistakes and no one is perfectTo prevent a problem from happening you gotta startfrom the surfacePrayin' to God every day but yet still I don' learn shitGrowing older every second but yet still my servantTo the systemAnd I'm targeted because I'm blackStrugglingI'm hustlin' because I refuse to lay flatPut my hands behind my backAnd give up my right that man in blackAnd blueI refuseI won't doSo I lace up my Jay's and keep it movingKeep you cluelessAnticipating my next stepStay ahead of myself and othersFor the behalf of my next breathAnd the test in lifeI've passed it twiceFeel like I've been here once beforeAhead of my time in my primeBangin' on that death do'-H-TwoOh-Cal, Alamedia

Double Consciousness is a term that comes from the pen of W. E. B. Du Bois which was made popular in his book The Souls of Black Folk. For Du Bois it meant “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” and of having two identities, one being American and the other being a person of color. “Two warring ideals in one dark body.” The title is also a pun on the fact that the two blog founders/editors are of different ethnicities which obviously effects the way they perceive the world. Jack Stephens is white (three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Guatemalan) and C is Pilipino. Despite this fact they are both unified in their thought on critiquing white privilege in American society and in combating its effects on people of color.